Rocks From a Brush: Artistic Encounters with Deccani Rocks, Hills and Landscapes

14 May 2021

India’s Deccan plateau contains ancient and dramatic rock formations, distinctive landscape features and open vistas. These settings had a transformative effect on Mughal painters trained in naturalistic observation, particularly in the northern Deccan where they were first encountered. But Deccani painters too had responded to their remarkable environment in unique styles and expressions that interwove idealised landscapes with real ones. This talk explores a variety of artistic encounters with Deccani rocks, mountains and landscapes through the brush of the painter. It is an expansion of an earlier discussion in the series “I Am Here To Wonder,” related to the upcoming film: Other Kohinoors, The Rocks of Hyderabad.